The Big Noise: The Free Speech Fight of 1912, Part Two

Joe Hill called them the “Starvation Army."

On Saturday, January 6, 1912, R.J. Walsh steered his car into a crowd gathered at Soapbox Row. A man had allegedly slashed Walsh’s tire. Reacting to shouts of “Shoot the police,” detective Joseph Myers hurled George Washington Woodbey to the sidewalk and clubbed Louis Grant in the face. Police arrested two protestors.

San Diego’s notorious Free Speech fight of 1912 had begun.

The next night, at 7:30 p.m., a large group — the curious and the committed — assembled in front of the Fox-Heller Building at 867 Fifth. Free-speech advocates kept the sidewalks clear of pedestrians.

San Diegan Laura Payne Emerson spoke for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from a wooden crate: When the workers take action, “they will no longer beg for some master to give them enough to live on, they will take what belongs to them.”

Attorney Ernest Kirk spoke for the socialists. The upcoming Free Speech fight, he vowed, would be “waged with vigor, but in a dignified manner.”

Though often accused of violence, the IWW stressed passive resistance. As they had in Spokane, Fresno, and elsewhere, their song-filled protests preferred the “mental dynamite” of direct action: flood the jails, and, in effect, sabotage the judicial system with sheer numbers.

January 8, 1912

The Common Council began its session at 10:45 a.m. At issue: an anti-street-speaking ordinance. Commissioner John L. Sehon declared that Soapbox Row, along E Street a block south of Broadway, was a “central congested district.” The council should ban speaking and singing — even the Salvation Army — from C Street south to F, and from Fourth to Sixth streets. Penalties would range from a $35 to $100 fine, or 30 days imprisonment, or both.

“There’s a limit to everything!” Sehon shot back. “The council must take immediate action!”

Sehon’s firm stance surprised many. A retired military captain, the 49-year-old had become mayor of San Diego in 1905. His platform, writes Warren Diehl, included “Socialists, Democrats, Independents, and liberal Republicans.” And he won a “major victory over the [Joseph] Spreckels-dominated political machine.”

Though he favored free speech, Sehon said he didn’t want another incident like Saturday’s, “when something serious might have happened.”

Speakers could always use a public hall outside the forbidden zone, someone offered.

“Too small,” countered a man named McKinley: “The city should give the plaza to the public for open-air meetings.”

Sehon objected.

McKinley: “Once again, the council has showed its inability to deal with the unemployed.”

Although Kirk insisted on a public hearing for the ordinance, at 1:00 p.m., the council voted unanimously in favor. They also passed an emergency clause: forget the 30-day waiting period. Start the ordinance today.

City attorney Charles Andrews raised an objection. Though Los Angeles had a similar ban, Andrews worried that the rush job might not hold up in court.

Chief Wilson said he’d wait two days, then arrest everyone who spoke or sang in the forbidden zone.

The San Diego Sun: “This ordinance, affecting a large area containing many streets where there is almost no traffic at night, was not intended primarily as a traffic ordinance. It was meant to curb, if not stop, street speaking here. The Sun is against it, and will work in every honorable way it can to have it repealed.”

Near midnight on January 9, 18 free-speech advocates met at Kirk’s office in the Union building. They included socialists, Wobblies, single-taxers and religious leaders. Kirk was “comrade chairman.”

Chief Wilson vowed to arrest every speaker on the January 10, so the group planed a detailed scenario.

They chose 12 “martyrs” to “mount the corner rostrum, bait the cohorts of Captain Sehon,” and go to jail gladly. Among those chosen for the “sacrificial altar”: socialists, George W. Woodbey and Kasper Bauer; Wobblies, Laura Payne Emerson, Wood Hubbard, and Jack White.

The group not only decided the order of the arrests, but at what intervals they would occur.

Then they named “disinterested witnesses” from the community. Sheriff Jennings, Councilman Woods, Judge Sloane, Rabbi Erlinger, and three ministers would report how the police behaved.

Kirk proposed a ban of the businesses that petitioned for the ordinance. And the group even chose to invite their ongoing foe the Salvation Army — Joe Hill called them the “Starvation Army” — to join the struggle.

Above all else, Kirk concluded, “Violence, unless necessary in self-defense, will not be offered by the speakers. [We are] emphatically against that.”

January 10, 1912

All of San Diego knew that the clash — what the Union labeled the “big noise” — would begin at 7:00 p.m.

Seen from above, through webs of thick black telephone and streetcar wires, Heller’s Corner at Fifth and E looked like a canyon of concrete and brick. A block south of Broadway, the First National Bank loomed three stories above the paved street on the northwest corner; the Bank of Commerce and Trust building stood across the intersection. Catty-corner, the 11-story Watts-Robinson building would begin construction in the fall — and become the San Diego Savings Bank. Two other banks did business nearby. In effect, Fifth and E was the hub of the city’s financial district.

On the southeast corner, Lion Clothiers had a sign on the roof boasting “Lion Clothes Are Better” in ten-foot letters. Heller’s popular grocery store was one door down at 847 Fifth. When feeling naughty, local children gave the “credit and delivery” establishment free advertising: they’d shout, “Go to Hell-ers money-saving store!”

On January 10, imitation gaslights — white glass balls like giant pearls — came on at 5:00 p.m. A crowd grew steadily at Fifth and E.

At 6:00 p.m., Kirk and the 12 “martyrs” met at his office. They had witnesses in position and $30,000 ready for bail. At 6:45 p.m., they would parade arm-in-arm down E to Heller’s Corner and test the ordinance at 7:00.

Comments

even these days it is so difficult to separate the good guys from the 'bad guys' - especially when it comes to our rallys and the role that law enforcement might play -- I say might, because the lines are always so vague in the heat of the moment -- do they act? react? - what is free speech when it comes to situations in which people may well be inciting a riot just for the sake of a reaction from the lawmakers (not the law enforcers per se) -- such a somber and sobering note to this part of the story.

Things are so different now, it is difficult to even comment on this story. By that I mean, there is none of the worker organization comparable to what existed back then, and the corporations and law enforcement are so tightly entwined, it seems almost impossible to object to any corporate policies without risking arrest or worse. There is virtually no prosecution of the police when they go completely berserk and beat demonstrators senseless or taze or pepper spray them. Heck--they don't even get prosecuted when they shoot civilians dead!
Years ago, the police would have been held to task or there would have been riots in the streets. Today, nothing happens. No one seems to mind that their rights are slowly being eroded, and law enforcement acts as the corporate dogs. Workers are being squeezed into being minimum wage slaves and the masses get conned into believing it is all necessary in order to lower taxes. The dupes are even lead to believe that what is needed is to deprive public sector employees of their pensions when in fact those pensions pale in comparison to what has been taken by the CEO's and politicians. Everyone is now being trained to keep their heads down and their faces buried in their iphone so as to notice even less of what is being ripped off. And the masses go to the movies and the masters go to their mansions in the tropics. Yea, we've really come a long way. Where is Big Bill Hayward when you need him? Who is our Mother Jones of today? And Eugene Debs? Etc., etc.